When Yuri moved in widi Helena — a woman Adrienne didn’t know, had never met — Adrienne was secredy furious with him. She told everyone how pleased she was for Yuri, though at least on one occasion when she had been drinking rather heavily she made mildly disparaging remarks about Helena’s intelligence. At other times, she spoke generously about them both. If her behavior during this period resembled jealousy, it was probably also a relief to her that Yuri was no longer her responsibility. It was a time of unburdening for her, a freeing herself from what she thought of as false obligations. She cut down on her practice, showed her drawings (she had done no new ones in a year) to an art dealer she had dated on two or three occasions, talked of having an exhibition. The tests she took could find nothing wrong, but she suffered, she believed, from some inexorable malady.
One day when Yuri came to the house to return Rebecca — the child lived alternate weeks with each parent — Adrienne, who usually kept out of sight, appeared at the door. She was extremely charming, almost desperately so. Yuri was reminded of their early days together when he was married to Patricia and she to Ralph. Adrienne suggested that they go out for a drink some evening. There was something important she wanted to discuss with him. She spoke the word “important” as if it were in italics. Yuri hesitated — it was his recent role to hesitate whenever she asked something of him — before saying he didn’t see why not. (The specific language is important to understanding what he meant.) His answer confused her, she said. Was he willing to have a drink with her or not?
Yuri picked her up at the house one night the next week after Rebecca was asleep. They didn’t want to go to a local bar — no one was supposed to know about the casual drink they were having together — so they drove out of the city to an inn they had been to before they were married, a place called the Libertyville Canal House. Nothing was said on the drive out about the occasion for this meeting. They talked about the profession they shared in common in a way that was reminiscent of old times together, argued about methods and diagnoses, talked about books read.
Our separation has improved you, Adrienne says in response to one of Yuri’s remarks.
In what way? Yuri wants to know.
Just that, Adrienne says. You haven’t noticed that I’m wearing the scarf you gave me on our tenth anniversary.
Yuri tells her of an article he has been writing about children of divorced parents.
After dinner at the inn — they have mussels and roast duck and black forest cake for dessert — they decide it is too late to drive back and they take a room for the night. The availability of a room at the Canal House, which is usually booked a month in advance, seems an inescapable omen. Adrienne calls the sitter and makes arrangements with her to stay overnight with Rebecca. Yuri calls Helena to say he will not be back until the next morning. She doesn’t ask why and he doesn’t volunteer a reason, having none to give, no acceptable excuse. He doesn’t want to lie. He has reached a point in his life where he avoids lying whenever possible.
The phone call to Helena depresses Yuri. On his guard, as if some moral arbiter were watching him from above, he imagines he will refuse Adrienne when the time comes. In his fantasy he has already told her it’s not going to happen, but when they climb into bed rejecting her is not his first priority.
In bed, after love, he says in a brusque voice, surprised at the tenderness he feels, Is this the important thing you wanted to talk about?
She gives him back his feigned indifference. You’re not as funny as you used to be, she says. I woke up the other morning and I remembered how funny you were when we first met. I remembered liking you and I wanted to see if it was real or some nostalgic illusion.
It’s all illusion, Yuri says, and its all real.
How smart you are, she says, only partially mocking him. She sits propped up on the narrow bed — it is no more than three- quarter’s size — with an arm around his shoulders. — Why did you go along with me? You knew what was going to happen.
I didn’t know, he says. I knew and I didn’t know. Is that an evasion? It’s possible that I was testing my feelings.
You still don’t say what you feel, she says.
You throw me over, he says, and now you want me to tell you that I never stopped being in love with you. You’re as presumptuous as ever.
I haven’t heard anyone say “throw me over” since I was a teenager, Yuri. (She presses her face to his.) I was hoping, I know this sounds silly after all this, that we could still be friends. I’ve always been fond of you. That’s true. There’s something about you that makes no sense to me that I like to have around.
It is two in the morning and Yuri, apparently disturbed at the turn of the conversation, suggests they go to sleep.
I don’t feel at all sleepy, she says. How can you think of going to sleep? I told you what I was feeling. You have to say something. It’s called conversation.
Or transactional therapy, he says. I’m feeling good at this moment, but I know I’m going to hate myself for having done this. After all the shit I’ve taken from you, you think I’ll come running whenever you call.
Do I think that? Adrienne says. I don’t know that that’s what I think. And what about all the shit I’ve taken from you?…Do you love Helena?
The question takes him by surprise. He turns away from her, delays his answer, says Yes.
She turns away from him onto her side, punishes him with distance.
He puts his hand on her back between her shoulder blades, falls asleep touching the hollow of her back. He imagines himself saying, You too, though the words are never spoken. He wakes to find her hugging him.
She whispers, Yuri, if I let myself feel anything for you, I would have never been able to “throw you over”. I had to get free. I was suffocating.
But what about me? he says. Are you the only one who has feelings?
Honey, I couldn’t tell you then, she says. Try to look at it from my viewpoint. Okay?
I’ve done too much of that, he says.
Have you? Have you? she says. She is playful, climbs on top of him and pins his arms to his sides. He lies passively for a minute or so, wearing her like a blanket, then he lifts his arms. They wresde, Adrienne intent on getting her way, intent on holding him down. It is a serious struggle in the guise of play.
It is cold in the room. Adrienne’s breath steams. You’ve had your way long enough, he says, rolling her over abruptly, pinning her down with his weight.
Adrienne absorbs his pressure as if it were her will to have him there. It is her victory, she tells herself.
I shower when I get out of bed, dress myself in yesterday’s clothes. A kind of inertia has settled over me, which I make an effort to resist. I ask Adrienne when she has to be back and she doesn’t answer, has slipped back into sleep. I think of waking her, but decide against it — she is like a child when she sleeps — and I go out for a walk to pass the time. It is a luxury to walk in the country on a cool June morning. I walk for about twenty minutes until I arrive at a cluster of shops that calls itself a town. There is nothing I want — even so I have brought no money — and I turn back, impatient with the slowness of the day.
Adrienne is dressed and ready to leave when I get back to the room. Where were you? she says in an aggrieved voice. I have to get back for Rebecca. You know that.
I remind her that she had been the one who had fallen asleep. She insists that she was awake, that she heard me open and close the door.